What's Hot: Very easy to design, select and order, durable vinyl with good colors, easy to apply.

What's Not: Loses adhesive strength if you take it off too many times during installation.

Putting skins on mobile phones started out very popular with younger users, but it has spread to more demographics. The iPhone 4 is a good device for skins if you?re using a frame/bumper case with a screen protector. The skins will protect the back and the front (minus the display) of the iPhone 4 with a durable vinyl that's printed in any graphics or text you design or in any of the large library of images from SkinIt. The ordering process is simple, and your customized skin takes only a few days to arrive.

Design

Like with many DIY cases, you can upload your own photos or input texts and print skins with these customized designs. To help you with your own design, SkinIt's web site has a mini-image editor where you can add images, input text, add shapes to your images or text and more. The online editor has some basic functions like cut/paste, undo/redo and preview. It?s easy to use and can really help you position your design perfectly.

What if you don?t want to design it on your own? SkinIt offers a huge collection of images already designed perfectly for your device. These images include sports teams (both college and pro leagues), movies and graphics designed by artists including famous paintings. There are specific categories of images also, such as Flags of the World, Pink Fashion, Butterfly, Music, Military, Seasonal, Zodia and even Video games. For those who like to stay on trendy topics, SkinIt offers current movie skins, like Pirates of the Caribbean or Tron Legacy (for this review), and skin for relief efforts such as Japan relief. Movie titles include lots of Disney flicks, and we can safely assume with new Disney movie titles coming out, we will see skins from these upcoming popular titles also.

Features

The skins from SkinIt are surprisingly thick as it?s made of automotive-grade 3M vinyl. The colors and images have good color balance and look very close to the image you see on the computer. The skin feels durable and protects your phone from small scratches from your fingernail or small pointy objects like keys. The skin is easy to install, but make sure you clean your device thoroughly before putting on the skin. The kit doesn?t come with an applicator (a plastic sheet that can help push out air bubbles for screen protectors), but if you have one it?s a good tool to use for applying the skin. The skins are thicker than most screen protectors and they create very few, if at all, air bubbles if you are careful during installation.

The vinyl skin doesn?t leave any adhesive residue behind after you peel the skin off of your device. This doesn?t mean you can rotate your skins freely as the skin loses its adhesive strength each time you peel it off. Our iPhone 4 Tron Legacy skin had perfect cutouts for the rear camera and all the front button and holes, and these cutouts had perfect alignments. There is a good selection of phones you can get skins for from SkinIt; other than the iPhone models, they also offer skins for some BlackBerry models, popular Android phones and even some feature phone models. Beyond mobile phones, you can get skins for your notebooks, digital cameras, MP3 players, ebook readers and even Bluetooth headsets.

Conclusion

Putting skins on your iPhone 4 can be a lot of fun and express your personality. The iPhone 4 skin protects the phone from scratches and is great to use with a bumper case with screen protector, or frame case or a clear case that shows off the skin design. In fact SkinIt offers screen protectors, a clear case and frame cases to go with your skins. The skin doesn?t get in a way of docking station or access to buttons, camera or ports, and it?s cheap and easy enough to change the look of your device more often than you would with a case.